


By so many, to so few.

by TayBartlett9000



Category: All Creatures Great and Small (TV), Historical RPF
Genre: Bravery, Courage, Death, Gen, Grief, Loss, Post WW2, SOLDIER - Freeform, Sacrifice, WW2, War, memorial, rememberence, sad fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 18:39:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19068388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TayBartlett9000/pseuds/TayBartlett9000
Summary: Many went to war, but many never returned.





	By so many, to so few.

**Author's Note:**

> Please do not read if you are sensative to the subject of this story.

The rain lashed down in sheets as he walked on, his thoughts weighing him down and making every faltering  step difficult. The church building loomed ever larger in his vision as he made his slow and  laborious way towards it, yearning to turn back, wishing that he could turn from his course of direction and run as  far and as fast as he could in any other.

He trudged on, the torants  of freezing  rain  and  the cold wind slapping him hard in the face and running down  his   cheeks in icey  sheets, like streams of tears. Perhaps  those droplets  were tears.  No one would have been able to tell. That was good.

He was cold, both inside and out. He had not been looking forward to this particular rememberence service. Far from it. It  was a day that he had been dreading for  weeks. Every morning he had  known that this  day was  ever closer to becoming reality and he had desperately prayed that such a reality would not come to pass, that he would be able to linger in the safety of denial. He knew that he  could not. Time could be a vicious enemy when faught against and now, time had won its way. He had been unable to run, had been unable to hide. Now he was here, making his way towards the church and that dreaded service with no way of escaping, with no  way of running.

The building was as cold as  the world outside its stone walls  and as James Herriot walked behind the rest of the miserable black clad congregation, he  shivered. His own black funeral outfit was not enough to keep the chill of the weather from his bones and its thin  material was certainly nowhere near enough to sufficiently keep the icey fingers of cold from crushing his very soul. That feeling would not lift quickly and as he sat amidst the group of morners, James knew that the cold feeling would never  quite lift entirely. He would deal with the pain later. If only he could get through the next hour, James knew that he would be alright again.

He sat upon the bench of the church, acutely aware of everyone who took places around him. Beside him, Hellen sat with  her head down and a  blank, almost mask-like expression on her face.  She reached out and clasped hold of James’s hand, squeezing it tightly as she tried her best to hold back tears. James too was finding it difficult. He knew that he must remain strong, for Hellen and for those whom his friend’s life had touched. James Herriot knew how to be strong when he needed to be.  He had been devestated by many  an animal’s death. Many things had kept him awake at night and he had  managed to come through the other side of those events alright. But this death  was far removed from the death of an animal. James Herriot  had himself  euthinised many a beautiful creature, knowing that he had been putting said animals out of their misery. But his friend and colleague had been taken, taken  mercilessly in the prime of his life. The  war had taken him from them.

The vicar was speaking now, in a loud enough voice to  be heard across the rows and rows of  pews. James turned his  unwilling attention to the  service that had now begun and sent a silent prayer for this painful  experience to be over soon. “We must not let their  sacrifice be forgotten,” the vicar was saying, “we must not let their deaths pass  out of memory, for we cannot allow their deaths to have been in  vain. We can elarn from these sacrifices, from our victories and from those men who layed down their lives for our freedom. We must remember them, for in memory we keep those men alive. In memory they shall remain with us, now and for ever. Let us remember them now.”

Then there followed a list of the men whom Darrowby would for ever remember as heroes. James sat with Hellen, their hands clasped as they listened to the list of sons, fathers, friends and brothers who had been taken by the second world war.

Brothers.

James   turned his head to the man sitting at the other side of him, noting the stoney features that were barely holding back the grief that was sweeping over everything. Siegfried’s hands were clasped tightly in his own lap, the knuckles   white as he gazed tensely  in front of him but somehow seeing nothing. His eyes were fixed on a point across the room and his jaw was clenched as if fighting back the urge to scream. James felt his pain. He knew that any pain he was feeling could have only paled in comparison with the pain now eating into Siegfried’s soul. James’s friend, though very close indeed, held a much greater place in Siegfried’s heart. Brothers did, didn’t they?

“Harry Barnet, Frank White, Robert Smith.”

James had known every single one of those men. Some were men he had known well. Some were men he knew only by sight or in passing. But no matter how he knew them or in what form their relationships had taken over the years, James felt the loss of each and every one of those gallant men. They had all been taken during the war. Looking to his left at the woman he loved, he felt a pang of something he couldn’t quite identify as he imagined a very different sequence of events. The war hadn’t taken James, but what if it had? What if he had left Hellen behind to face the uncertainty of the future without him. As her husband, James had to protect Hellen. If the war had taken him as it had taken his friend, he would not have been able to do that. Lucky. That was what he was. Pretty damnd lucky.

“Albert Sims, Ralph Simmonds, Tristan Farnon.”

There. He had spoken out loud the name that James Herriot had been avoiding for weeks. Once that name had been spoken, it seemed as if a dam had burst inside James’s mind and he blinked furiously as he tried again to suppress the tears that he knew couldn’t be prevented from falling. James lifted a hand and pressed it to his eyes, desperate not to allow the tears to fall. He could not cry. He would not cry.

Siegfried rose swiftly at James Herriot’s right  side and exited the drafty church hall at spead. It was apparent that he could not stand to stay in that freezing church any longer. James couldn’t blame him.   He caught only a blurr of movement before the older and only surviving Farnon brother was out of  the door and out of sight. The slamming of the church door echoed loudly off the walls and everyone turned to where Siegfried had vanished. James winced. That  noise had been so loud in the silence of the service.  

James had to follow him. He pulled his hand  out of Hellen’s grip and followed Siegfried out of the room, moving as quickly as he could without running. He didn’t want poor Siegfried to be outside in the rain all alone. James knew that if his own brother had been taken from him, he would have wished to be surrounded by those he cared about and who cared about him.

He found Siegfried standing hunched against the church wall, head down and eyes fixated upon the ground. He didn’t look up as James  hurried into the rain  soaked courtyard. Indeed, he didn’t seem to have noticed that his friend and work colleague was standing in the rain with him.

James cleared his throat quietly, intent  on alerting Siegfried to his presence. “Eh, Siegfried,” he said  hesitantly, glad when his friend looked up to glance his way, “are you alright?”

James knew that he  hadn’t needed to ask that question. Of course Siegfried wasn’t alright. Who would be when one’s brother had been taken from him? But it was the sight of his friend’s stricken expression  that shocked him the most. Siegfried’s face was  contorted with an agony that though not physical, was probably of a more acute kind. Though Siegfried hadn’t shed a tear, James could see the pain in his eyes.

“It’s as if the weather’s suffering along with us,  doesn’t it James?” Siegfried asked, giving James a sad smile as he glanced heavenwards. Droplets of rain fell down from the skies and landed upon Siegfried’s face. Now, even if he had been crying, James wouldn’t have been able to tell.

“I know, Siegfried,” he said in a voice grown horse with emotion, “I couldn’t stay for a moment longer in  there either.”

“What do you think happened to him, James?” Siegfried Farnon asked in a tone of profound sadness. A shadow crossed  Siegfried’s face as he and James stared at each other. “Do you think it was a violent death? Do you think he was in pain?  What do you suppose happened?”

James shook his head. He knew that Siegfried wished for some sort of consolation, some sort of  answer that would help him peace together the facts about what had befallen Tristan. But he couldn’t answer any of these questions. He had no answers. All he  and his family had been told was that he had died in action. That was all that they had been permitted to know. “I really couldn’t tell you, Siegfried,” he said sadly, wishing that he had something of greater use to say, “I just don’t know. But whatever happened to him, Tristan’s safe now. Nothing can hurt him now. He’s in heaven, Siegfried.” Even as he uttered these last words, James wasn’t entirely sure if he believed in what he was saying. He certainly hoped that Triss was in fact in heaven, safe from anything that could harm him. However, even the idea of Tristan  being safe in heaven could not cheer him much.

Siegfried nodded, apparently a little consoled by what James  had said. “I suppose so, James,” he agreed. He frowned. “I miss him, you know. I know I argued with him most of the time, but I did admire him in a way.”

James wasn’t entirely sure what to say. Siegfried and Tristan had spent most of their time at Skeldale battling in some way or another, but he knew what Siegfried meant. “I know, Siegfried.”

“ I mean,” Siegfried continued  doggedly, “I know that I badgered him too much about his lifestyle and the fact that he didn’t take his work seriously,  but I never  meant that he was a  coward or anything.” He closed his eyes, pain of many kinds flitting  across his features once again. Opening his eyes again, Siegfried aimed a tortured look at James. “Do you think that’s why he went to war, James?”

James shook his head. “I doubt that you know, Siegfried. We were called up, remember. Tristan went  to war along with everyone else, as we did.” He  reached out and placed a hand on Siegfried’s shoulder. “I’m sure that he knew how  valuable you thought he was.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course.”

Siegfried looked away from James and across the  sodden landscape, his beloved home of Yorkshire. “It’s terrible, isn’t it James,” he said miserably, “I mean, all of those men who died in the war. So many families are like ours, torn apart. Aren’t they?”

James  remained silent. He  didn’t  need to speak.

 “I wish  I had had the chance to say goodbye to him, James,” came the saddened voice of his  friend, “I really wish we had  had the chance to say goodbye before we left. I would have told him quite a number of things.”

“So would I, Siegfried,” James said in a whisper. “So would I.”

The two men stood in silence  for what seemed like years. James’s mind was rebelling against him. He was thinking not of the service that had added Tristan’s name to the names of the lost, not of the crushing weight baring down upon him or the future that was to be played out without him. He could think only of the moment that had started this downward spirel of misery and dejection. That moment would stand out for ever in his mind as a moment that changed everything, a moment that had been sealed in a letter addressed to Siegfried.

James remembered reading out that letter over the breakfast table after coming home from the war. Though it had felt good to be returning home, James had lived through some difficult times, times that he knew would live on in his memories. That letter had stolen the joy from him in one fell swoop. “Dear Mr Farnon,” the letter had read in a bold script, “we regret to inform you that your younger brother Tristan was killed recently during a combat operation with the royal air force.”It had been a heartless letter, a note sent without emotion. But why would there have been any? The person who had had the task of writing it probably hadn’t known Tristan in life. That person didn’t have all the memories that Siegfried and James had of him, hadn’t shared many happy times with Triss as they had. That was the saddest part about receiving that letter.  

That had been the ending point to the happier period of James Herriot’s life and the beginning  of the darker times.  

“He shouldn’t have been    out there fighting, James,” Siegfried said presently, voice  tinged with a pleading note that deepened the feeling of cold inside him, “he should still be here, working at the practice with us. He should be back here, chasing those women that he’s so fond of. He shouldn’t have died out there with no one to help him.”

“I know, Siegfried.” What else could he say?

“Such a waste,” his friend continued, “such a young life, just thrown away.”

James shook his head firmly. “No, Siegfried. You can’t say that. You can’t say that Tristan’s life was just thrown away.” He glanced to the rain streaked heavens. “He’s a hero. They’re all heroes, every one of them. Who knows, if it hadn’t been for all those men, maybe we wouldn’t have won the war at all. He’s a hero, Siegfried.”

Siegfried paused for a moment, then nodded. “I suppose so, James.”  

James thought of what he had just told Siegfried. He was right. Tristan was a hero. He had  helped to stop  Hitler  and the Germans from  destroying all that they held dear in Britain. Tristan had sacrificed his own life to ensure that the war was won and for that, James was grateful. He remembered what Winstan Churchill had said after the battle of Britain. ‘Never in the  field of human conflict,  was so much owed  by so many to so few.’ It was true of Tristan too. He owed Tristan so much. Siegfried owed Tristan so much, as they did every man who had layn down his life for the sake of their king and country. James had so much to be  grateful to Tristan and others for. He would ensure that he remembered this gallant sacrifice in years to come. He didn’t want to forget. He would never forget.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The real Tristan Farnon didn't die in the second world war. This is merely a fictional story. The rest of the names mentioned besides those of James, Siegfried or Tristan are made up bye me.


End file.
